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Hi Gang,
Looks like I'm pretty much decided on the new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20. But here's the deal -- I have NO knowledge of memory cards! This camera uses SD and MMC cards. Which is better? What's a reasonable price? Are there certain brands to avoid/ look for? I know that there are differences in speed between cards, but how does one compare speeds?
Any info is much appreciated!

"How wonderful it will be to have a leader unburdened by the twin horrors of knowledge and experience." -- Mr. Wick

You want the high speed cards that write 9-10MB per second. Lexar has a brand out that has like 60x on it. Any Panasonic SD card that is 256 or above will be high speed, but they are expensive...however, Outpost.com has a sale on the 256 model right now. $49.99 for the unit with a rebate that makes it $19.99 after all is said and done.
Sandisk cards are to be avoided from what I have read.

My mom and dad have a sandisk SD card that they used on their last vacation. Near the end of the trip, the card went south. They sent it to me and I tried using PC Inspector Smart recovery to get the pictures back. All were lost and the card won't format or work anymore. So, I would avoid using the Sandisk products in the future...

Hmmm... Is this only an issue w/ SD cards?
I don't use SD cards and have 2 SanDisk Ultra II CF cards -- 1 new, 1 ~5 months old. Never heard of any real problems w/ SanDisk cards although it could be an SD thing, which I would not be aware of.
Anyway, I would not worry about SanDisk unless you get large number of complaint reports. All the card manufacturers are capable of churning out a few bad cards (much like in any other industry), and SanDisk has huge marketshare, so you can expect to see their fair share of reports.
If you're really concerned about it, maybe Lexar would be best. Seems like they have the best customer service regarding cards going south, so if you happened to be the rare case stuck w/ a bad card, they are more likely to go the extra mile for you. I've heard of people getting most of their files recovered by Lexar's tech support after card failure, but never heard of such from the other makers.
BTW, never heard of Kingmax until now. And in the other thread, the poster says Newegg sells a 512MB fast SD card for just $50-60. Sounds too good to be true as I'd expect a fast SD card to be more expensive than a fast CF card -- and the SanDisk Ultra II 512MB CF card runs ~$85 right now and is already the cheapest of its kind for reputable CF cards.
_Man_

Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things..." (St. Paul)

PNY 256 MB SD card -> Slow as molasses, IDed as made by Toshiba. So far no issues with reliability
Kingmax Platinum 256 MB SD card -> Blazing fast, should be at least on par with everything else. See other thread for other comments.
Both used in Panasonic FZ10 camera.
Speed test was done using camera in burst mode. PNY card took ~15+ seconds to write a full burst (FZ10 burst mode is limited to around 5 pictures, I forget the exact amount). Kingmax card took about 3 seconds for same burst.

Ridata or Ritek high speed CF cards r also gaining some support. They have been said to be as fast or even faster than Lexar and Sandisk and cost a lot less than these premiun cards. I was looking to get one but they seem to be in high demand that its kinda hard to get a hold of them.

The problem though Eric is that my camera and Aaron's will only accept SD cards. So the comparison really isn't going to be too fair since they are different formats for different cameras.
My Kingmax card is still at Fedex in LA and is supposed to be here tomorrow by 4:30pm. I hope they can pull it off!

I went ahead and pulled the trigger on the 512 MB Kingmax card, since I need something ASAP. I figure that the few things I've heard about it have been positive, and if it does turn out to be a dud, then $56 won't break the bank. It had better work for at least the length of the HTF meet though!!!

"How wonderful it will be to have a leader unburdened by the twin horrors of knowledge and experience." -- Mr. Wick

Aaron,
IMHO, I don't think the $56 is the issue. If the card dies, you'll probably lose whatever pics on it. Let's say you went on your honeymoon w/ it and the card dies after you've filled 75% of it w/ nice pics that you can't really reshoot. Are the lost pics worth zip to you so that the loss is still only $56? That was my point in the previous reply. The same thing can be said about PC storage reliability, backups, etc. It's not the hardware or the media itself one worries about. That stuff can be easily replaced. It's the lost content that really matters.
_Man_

Just another amateur learning to paint w/ "the light of the world".

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things..." (St. Paul)

Well, that wouldn't be an issue either, because Lucy would kill me and I would be dead.

You do make a good point though. I guess I'll just have to wait and see. While there isn't a lot of info on the Kingmax cards, the feedback I've seen has been 100% positive. Had there been no info at all, I wouldn't have taken the chance.

When a flash card goes "bad," does it die completely after a while, fail fairly quickly, or simply lose data now and then?

"How wonderful it will be to have a leader unburdened by the twin horrors of knowledge and experience." -- Mr. Wick

BTW, is a 1GB Sandisk CF card for $82 a good price? Buy.com appears to be having a sale on them, and also on 2GB CF Sandisk cards for $137. Both qualify for free shipping, and both are Type I CF cards.

The SanDisk Ultra II, which I use, and also their Extreme are 9-10MB/s. Some of the other well known brands have also come out w/ similar speed CF cards recently.

But most cameras don't take too much advantage of the high speed performance though.

BTW, since we're talking about card speeds, you might find this of interest even though the database is only for DSLRs, not fixed lens compacts. It also has card-to-computer transfer speeds and a couple other items.

"Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things..." (St. Paul)

No answer? Come on, I am sure many of you have 256MB cards (I don't even own a camera), how many pics does the camera say you have left when you introduce an empty 256MB card?! Or any card for that matter, I just need to know the average size of a FINE picture with a 3.2 meg camera. I have no idea what one ends up with after JPEG compression and such.
How many pix can you take with your device?
--
H